An almost empty electric car on the mountain: (not) a problem?

Start GV60 on the Col de Turini

The tour led to the Col de Turini at an altitude of 1,749 meters, where the legends of the march have fought a great battle. The Genesis GV60 Sport Plus (from 74,480 euros) makes it easy to ride: with strong traction (all-wheel drive) and lively (0-100 km/h in four seconds), it pushes its weight of 2,145 kg and two occupants towards the lightest peak of wonderful There is no need to worry about gear selection (there is only one) and there is more than enough power (up to 700 Nm) at any speed. If your nerves and the short space between the hairpin bends allow it, the boost button brings more speed into place – then all 490 horses can run for ten seconds and the seats hold tighter with their adjustable lateral support.

Start at 45 percent – 53 km to the top

At the beginning of the trip, the navigation system showed a distance of 27 km as the crow flies on the Monaco currency, the route calculation ends up at least 53 km. When we started driving, the 77.4 kWh battery still had 45 percent available. That should be enough, as the WLTP consumption figure promises a range of 466 kilometers under ideal conditions. But the combination of a motivated editor, a zoom button and a gradient in a two-digit percentage range is the exact opposite of ideal. It’s amazing how much fun you can have driving on a narrow road while driving within the normal legal limit of 80 km/h. Once the battery level reached 22 percent, the boost button, which was not used anyway, was disabled. But no problem, it still went up fast. Accelerate, brake, turn and then do it again. Good for the driver, bad for fuel consumption.

Shortly before the destination, a warning with a ten percent battery level reminded us to start thinking about charging.

In fact, the summit had a charging station available, but it preferred to stir up hatred about e-mobility by refusing to cooperate with the charging card instead of following its purpose.

A distance of 20 km for 53 km?

The GV60 showed a charge of only eight percent and a range of 20 km, with a return distance at least 53 km. And the user does not drive the electric car to zero percent when it is empty. I was a little nervous and wondered if I could be more economical. As a result, other Genesis EVs (Electric Vehicles) shined in a completely different light, namely as large mobile power stations. The function called car-loading not only allows you to start a coffee machine or a raclette on the Col de Turini, but also to plug the usual charging brick into the Schuko socket.

However, the schedule does not allow more than proof that payment in this way basically works. It’s good to know if the power will actually go out. Adapter as a modern storage device.

Just because of its relative position at an altitude of 1,749 meters compared to the target at sea level, the GV60 saved a potential energy (mass x gravity x height) of about 11 kWh. Since an electric car doesn’t abuse the brakes to waste energy when driving downhill like a conventional combustion engine, but instead feeds part of the energy into the battery via a generator, the original scenario was pretty scary at second glance. The experienced Swiss colleague was immediately confident that the calculation would be done easily with the remaining 20 km and 53 km run. So straight back without loading.

On the slopes, it is important that you can quickly adjust the recovery rate to suit your needs and the gradient using the shift paddles on the steering wheel. The consumption display, however, stubbornly remained at 0.1 kWh, but only because it obviously cannot or is not allowed to show negative consumption values ​​(why?). After 27 km, the battery level increased to ten percent and the remaining range of 29 km already showed a good end. In Monaco we even had enough time to walk around the city.

Only two percent of the spend on the return trip

In the destination near sea level, after about 60 km, we only used a total of two percent of the battery and we arrived with six percent. At 20 km, the GV60 still had the same range as when the trip started on the Col de Turini. On the downhill, the car mustered enough energy to easily get us through the freeway and through Monaco city traffic. From a height of 2,300 meters there was at least 700 meters to climb on the return trip.

Conclusion: recovery on the mountain

Route planning in challenging topographic terrain is special. We used 37 percent of our capacity to climb the mountain. When returning it was only two percent in the same way. The theoretical range of Genesis GV60 in this model was only 143 km uphill, and calculated 3,000 km downhill! Note: If you make a hill in an electric vehicle, you will most likely be able to come back down. Then it’s not so bad if the charging station is up.